Abdul Salam Zaeef was a founder of the Taliban and his memoir, My Life with
the Taliban, offers a fascinating if dispiriting insight into the movement,
says Nick Meo

Spies, generals and ambassadors will pounce on this book, poring over its pages for clues to a way out of the Afghan morass. They will be disappointed, and perhaps dismayed as well.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a founder of the Taliban in 1994 and a minister during its short-lived regime, has much to say about the wars in Afghanistan and the roles he has played in them. As a teenage refugee from the Soviet invasion, he joined the mujahideen, and a few years later was fighting alongside Mullah Omar when the future Taliban leader lost an eye.

He has written a fascinating account of his own remarkable life which gives real insight into why the Taliban was formed, what motivates it, and what it is now trying to achieve. It is what he has to say about hopes of ending the current war, however, that will be of most interest to the spooks and diplomats in Kabul, Washington and London; they will have been hoping that Mullah Zaeef would point the way towards a negotiated end to the fighting. But he does not, and what he has to say suggests that ending the bloodshed could prove extremely difficult, if possible at all.

Since he returned from imprisonment in Guantánamo Bay, Mullah Zaeef has been a 'reconciled’ Taliban, living quietly in Kabul and at peace with the government. He was always known as a moderate, even when Osama bin Laden was based on Afghan soil and Mullah Zaeef was serving the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as first a minister and then as ambassador to Pakistan.

After the attacks of September 11th 2001 he became known as the face of the Taliban, giving shambolic press conferences on the lawn of his ramshackle embassy in Islamabad. With the fall of the regime, he disappeared, first into obscurity, then into Guantánamo – a harrowing experience which he vividly describes. Then, as Afghan political players tend to, he popped up again.

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In the past two years he has had an important role, if an ill-defined one, in secretive on-off peace talks between the government of president Karzai and Mullah Zaeef’s old Taliban comrades who are still fighting jihad. But even though he is regarded as a moderate, Mullah Zaeef remains a fervent believer in the Taliban cause.

He is still loyal to Mullah Omar and he hates what he calls the 'American beasts’ with venom. He takes a few swipes at Britain, too, but it is America that he blames for wrecking his nation, fuelling the war, and trampling on the human rights of the Afghan people.

It is somewhat ironic that he has nothing much to say about the Taliban’s own record of repressing women, or of carrying out ethnic massacres when it was in power before 2001. Suicide bombings and the inevitable civilian suffering they have caused since 2005 are glossed over as well.

The editors of this invaluable book, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, lived in Kandahar to research it at a time when hardly any other foreigner would dare venture south. Their bravery was worthwhile. This is a book that should be read by anybody with an interest in why Afghanistan has gone so badly wrong, even if it doesn’t say how to put it right.